Hero
by saucyerin
Summary: After JT is killed, Emma falls to the wayside. She begins to use drugs and pushes everyone she loves away from her. Not even Sean realizes how much pain she's been in. One fateful night, Sean finds Emma passed out on the floor of her bedroom and finally sees just how bad things have gotten. Can he help her before she goes too far?


Sean had been knocking on her bedroom window for about twenty minutes and was beginning to feel anxious. It wasn't like Emma to be out late or spend time anywhere else except her bedroom these days. Manny had moved back home and unless Emma was with Sean, she usually wasn't with anyone. A few knocks and he upgraded to banging on the glass. When she still wasn't answering, he forced open the window.

"Emma?" He called out. Sean navigated the darkness with ease, having been in the basement enough times to remember where the lights were. Flipping the switch, the sight before him was enough to lose his breath.

Emma was slumped against the side of her bed, her hair covering her face. Surrounding her was an array of needles, spoons and lighters. An empty baggy was on her lap and the shoe lace she had used as a tourniquet was wrapped around her wrist. From where Sean was standing, he couldn't tell if Emma was breathing. His entire body felt like it was vibrating, his sweaty palms clenching at his sides, his eyes filling with tears, his feet began to move beneath him towards the love of his life.

Sean dropped to his knees at her side and took a shaky breath, reaching his hands out to brush her hair out of her sweaty face. His hands went to her neck, feeling for a pulse. Faint, and fluttering like a bird, it was there. A sense of purpose swelled within him and he reached for her, picking her up and carrying her to her bathroom. He turned the shower on and sat inside it with her. Shifting so the water hit Emma's face, he begged for her to wake up.

"Emma, please. Please wake up." Sean's voice was cracking, "Emma, come on, this isn't you."

Suddenly she began to sputter and moved her hands to her face to rub the water away. It took a few more moments before she opened her eyes and made an attempt to move away from whoever it was that was holding her under the spray and ruining her buzz. She felt hands reach for her and try to hold her back.

"Let me go!'" Emma was yelling, pushing the hands away.

"Emma! Emma, it's me!" Sean was shaking her now, "Look at me, Em."

Emma finally pushed her way out of Sean's arms, stumbling her way back to her bedroom. Her soaking wet clothes left puddles in her wake. Her movements were slow and jerky, like her brain wasn't connecting to her limbs. She didn't know if Sean was behind her or if he was even real, not that she really cared. When she saw that she had left her needles out, she kicked them under the bed so no one would find them. Doing this caused her to step on the needle she had just used, stabbing her in the foot. The most she could manage was a small, "Ow," lifting her foot up an inch. She became unsteady and fell forward onto the bed. Without any energy left, she just stayed there, face down in her blankets, her feet dangling off the side, letting blood drip onto the rug.

Sean had taken a moment to collect himself, letting the water wake him up just as it had woken Emma. This was the last thing he expected to find, Emma had never done drugs that he knew of, but he was kicking himself for not noticing the signs before. All at once, he remembered the long sleeves, the sweaters in the warm weather. It was simple things he should have noticed that were always a sign when Ellie was hiding something. He should have realized she was doing something, even if he didn't realize it was this. He'd been so preoccupied with helping everyone else after JT's death that he hadn't been paying much attention to Emma. Now he realized she needed him more than ever. _How long has this been going on? _He asked himself.

He shook out his hair and walked back into Emma's portion of the basement to find her face down on the bed.

"Emma, are you okay?" He asked tentatively. He was afraid that she had overdosed, but wasn't completely sure.

Emma groaned something that sounded like she was telling him to go away, not even attempting to move.

"I'm not going away, not after what you just pulled." Sean rolled her onto her back and pulled her into a sitting position. She still had her eyes closed, but was breathing more steadily and she had some color back into her face.

"Sean, it has nothing to do with you. Just go home." Her words came out slurred and in slow motion.

"Emma, open your eyes. I need to see that you're okay."

Slowly, her eyes opened, and in that moment he realized just how void of life they were. She had been in this horrible place for so long and he had never noticed. Emma was always the one helping Sean, not the other way around. He thought she was safe, he thought she of all people would be okay through all of this. How was he to know that his perfect Emma would turn to drugs, would shut everyone away? Not that any of them would notice because they were all caught up in their own grief to see anything going wrong. They had all failed her.

"I'm fine."

"Why would you do this? I don't get it, Emma." He was holding her head between his hands, "How could you do this to yourself?"

"I'm not doing anything. I was sleeping before you so rudely woke me up." Emma reached up to pull his hands off of her face. She tried to push him away, but was too weak.

"Emma, you were not sleeping. You passed out." Sean shook his head. "I saw the drugs, Em. Heroin? I know what it looks like, I'm not stupid. Don't bother trying to tell me it isn't yours either, you've got the marks on your arms to prove it."

"Sean, you never cared enough to notice before, what's it matter now? It's my life, my body and I'll do with it what I please."

"I love you. I always have. If I ever thought for one minute that this was what you were going through, I would've stopped you sooner."

Emma barked out a laugh, "None of you cared. You're all too wrapped up in yourselves. That's fine by me. I don't matter. I am nothing, Sean. Don't you get it? Nothing. It doesn't matter if I live or if I die."

"Emma, that's not true," He moved to sit beside her on the bed, his wet clothes clinging to him. "We all love you. I love you so much it hurts. I could never see myself with anyone other than you. You're it for me, you're the one. Emma, there is no one else in the entire universe that means as much to me as you do."

"Wow, you must not care much about anything then." Emma smiled. There was no warmth in her face. She was dead on the inside. Completely and utterly numb. The drugs were something that made her forget for a while, made her forget her problems, her pain. They made life easier. If she was high, she never had to worry about getting hurt, never had to worry about truly facing her problems, because at the end of the day, all that really mattered was if she had more dope to keep that buzz.

In that moment, Sean felt like he was falling into a pit. He couldn't believe that he had let this happen to her, that he hadn't noticed how much she was hurting. How could he have looked into her eyes every day and not have seen that she wasn't in there? She had checked out of her life and was doing everything in her power to make sure that she couldn't feel. Emma Nelson had turned into a zombie and her idiot boyfriend had never even taken a moment to notice when it happened.

Over the years, there had been times when Emma had shut down. After the shooting, she had made sure that he was okay, then tried to destroy herself, lowering herself to hooking up with Jay. She had stopped eating sometime last year, something she clearly wasn't doing now, either. Sean knew that Emma had a habit of shutting down and being her own worst enemy. But, to Sean, he had never personally seen any of it. He had never truly believed that the perfect girl he had been in love with since grade seven was actually able to self destruct. This was Emma. Emma Nelson. Cause girl. The girl who would drop anything to help a someone or something if she felt it was needed. The girl who had pulled himself out of more than one funk. She was his reason for living, or at the very least the reason he hadn't been found in a gutter, dead and alone.

It was supposed to be Sean who fell apart. He was the one that was always messing up, always in trouble. Compared to him, Emma was an angel. She had never had a bad childhood, had a mother who loved her, a best friend she could always depend on. He had struggled since day one with his anger, with the situations he always put himself in. Emma was the one to pull him out of those times, she always made him better. She made him want to be better. She had done so much for him and this was how he repaid her.

"Emma, I never, ever meant to hurt you like that." He looked at her, pleading. "I promise; I will do everything and anything in my power to help you. Just tell me how."

"There's nothing to help. I don't need help." She said, staring at him drowsily. She was struggling to keep her eyes open and if it weren't for Sean's hand on her arm, she would have fallen backwards.

Sighing, he realized they wouldn't get anywhere when she was still high and on the verge of passing out. He stood up saying, "Let's at least get you out of these wet clothes."

He made his way over to her dresser and found a pair of his sweats she had claimed for herself, an old t-shirt and the fuzzy socks she wore when she was sick. Bringing the items over to her, he placed them on the bed and told her to put her arms up. Peeling her wet shirt off, he saw just how thin she had become, ribs protruding through her paper like skin. In the light, her skin looked sickly, a sort of yellow, off color. And then he saw them. The bruises. They marred her skin, causing her to hiss in pain when his hand involuntarily reached out to brush the darkest of the marks.

"Who did this to you?" He asked, his teeth grinding together. He could feel his muscles tense and tighten, ready to hit whoever had done this to her, his Emma. The anger that swept through him was hard to contain, and once again he could feel his body buzzing as if he was going to explode.

"No one," She said as she snatched the shirt from the bed, pulling it over her pounding head, forcing her arms into the holes.

"That's a lie. You didn't do this to yourself." He was trying very hard to keep himself in check. An outburst of anger was the last thing she needed. "Em, who was it?"

"I don't know!" She yelled. She stood up and flailed her arms wildly, "I don't know who it was okay? I blacked out, I don't remember."

Sean sighed, "Okay. Put these on," He handed her the sweats. She took them from him and began to peel her jeans down her cold legs. She put on the pants sitting on the edge of the bed, attempting to hold in her tears. She may have been able to had she been alone, but Sean's very presence at that moment was enough to push her over the edge. Emma wasn't entirely sure why she was crying, she hadn't cried in a long time. Maybe it was relief that someone had finally noticed, someone had finally seen her and noticed what she was putting herself through. It could also be anger that it meant her habit was out in the open and was now going to be taken away from her. Either way, she was terrified that it had been was Sean who had found her.

"I'm sorry."

He almost missed the quiet voice that could have come from a child. Emma's face was down, her hands wiping her eyes, soft sniffling noises were permeating the air.

"Emma, it's okay," He drew her into his arms, one hand on the back of her head as his other stroked her back. Sean lost track of how long she had been crying into his shoulder, brought back from his thoughts when she started snoring. He gently laid her back against her pillows, turning her on her side. _Just in case,_ he thinks.

As he's covering her with her blanket, he's startled when she grips his arm and looks at him pleading, "Please don't leave."

"I would never," He says, tucking her into her bed. As she drifted off to sleep again that night, he looked at his own wet clothes and shook his head. Sean stripped down to his boxers and threw his damp clothes in the dryer. While he was waiting for them to be done, he searched Emma's room for any more drugs. After a thorough search, the only items he could find were the ones she kicked under her bed. He placed the items in a bag as the buzzer sounded for the dryer. Putting his dry clothes back on, he grabbed the bag and climbed out Emma's window. He walked quickly to the trash can kept next to the family's driveway. Looking around the street and making sure there was no witnesses around, he opened the can and threw the bag inside. Checking once more that he was alone in the street, he pulled the can to the curb to save Snake a trip in the morning and made his way back inside to the sleeping girl who had stolen his heart many years before.

_We're going to get through this, _he thinks to himself as he gets into bed next to her, drawing her close to him and burying his face in her hair.


End file.
